Tuesday, 5 July 2016

Homemade crumbly vanilla fudge recipe

It has been quite a while since I last made fudge. I don't think I have made it since leaving university or since having children. Too much stirring of molten sugar for my liking.

But my kids are a lot older now and happy to play independently and do not rely on being tucked up in a carrier whilst I cook like they used to. I had a hankering for vanilla fudge and I happened to have all of the ingredients to hand.

What you will need:

300ml milk - I used Lactofree semi-skimmed as that is what we always buy but the fudge is certainly not dairy or lactose free. If you wanted you could always use dairy free milk and butter.

Measure out all of the ingredients into a large saucepan and melt gently over a low heat until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. If you still feel grains of sugar as you scrape the bottom of the pan keep heating and stirring.

Turn up the heat to bring the mixture to a rolling boil and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula as often as you can. Be very careful, the sugar solution will be exceedingly hot!

If you use a sugar thermometer, heat the mixture until the soft ball stage (115 degrees Celcius) or until the mixture comes together in a ball if a spoonful is dropped into a bowl of cold water.

Once the soft ball stage has been reached, remove the pan from the heat and beat the mixture until it thickens and loses its sheen then quickly pour into a dish lined with greaseproof paper and smooth over with a palette knife.

Allow to cool; this could take a long time and I do not recommend you try it before it is cool as it will still be very hot and also don't speed things up by putting it in the fridge, you could affect the fridge's efficiency let alone crack a glass shelf.

Scrape the rest out of the saucepan and try it or put in a sandwich bag to crumble over ice cream